Benjamin Werner visited the site of the Woolloongabba Hotel over the course of its recent demolition to capture and record images that exude a Gothic, operatic sensibility. Bathed in velvety shadow and overtones of film noir, Werner’s work is fuelled by a subject that neatly fit his studies of ‘the sublime’. He saw in the impending destruction of the historical building an awe-inspiring moment out of the ordinary, one where he could act out the role of witness amid eerie darkness and invoke particular emotions in the viewer by painterly distortion and obscurity.